Retribution Mana Efficiency at 80 in Raids

It seems as all but a distant memory of healing 39 other people inside the loomish walls of Naxxramas.  Last night was not my first return to the floating citadel but perhaps the most anticipated.  As I took the portal up to the central chamber, my eyes scanned the environment for any signs of Mr. Bigglesworth.  “This place is a tomb…” (Thanks Lawrence Fishburne in Event Horizon).  There were only 10 of us this time but the excitment was larger than the raid.  We had been on hiatus from raiding ever since engaging Felmyst some countless months ago.  This engagement was long overdo.

As per standard procedure when entering Naxxramas for the first time, we opted for the Spider wing as our primary endeavor.  Clearing through the skimpy allotments of trash en route to Anub’rekhan, I related the upcoming encounter to my comrades in the instance that some of them hadn’t set foot inside these walls before.  Strangely enough, I was tasked with the tanking of the adds he spawns given that we only had one tank (yes, I am Retribution for your doubters out there).  Surprisingly, it went fairly well.  Our first couple attempts served as a painful yet necessary reminder that the tank has to leave early enough as not to be hit with Locust Swarm.  Our third and fourth attempts provided ample incentive for the healers of our raid to spread out so they weren’t sent airborne simultaneously thus allowing our tank to take a dirt nap (or cobbled stone as it may be).  Our fifth attempt was flawless and resulted in my acquisition of some very nice Plate DPS boots (pictured).

Now Anub’rekhan isn’t a very good gauge for anything related to efficiency as the majority of the fight lies outside of the standard DPS race.  However, in our first night back to raiding and with three members of our raid (including the MT) that have never set foot in Naxxramas before, we were able to tear through Anub’rekhan, Noth the Plaguebringer, Heigan the Unclean (dancing shoes GO), Loatheb and even made time to head over to Wyrmcrest and strip the loot from Sartharion’s corpse.  Given the assortment of encounters we faced tonight, I am inclined to use Loatheb as my example for this post.  My logic is simple in that, aside from a quick break to grab a popped fungal spore once every two minutes, the fight was entirely a straight DPS burn race for me in which I popped everything I possibly could and attempted to squeeze every last point of damage from my weapon.  This meant the use of any and all abilities available for my damage-doing use so long as I could fit them into a suitable DPS rotation.  The resultant set of abilities, in order of priority (higher priority abilities were always used prior to lower priority ones should they come off CD) was as follows:

1. Judgement of Wisdom
2. Crusader Strike
3. Divine Storm
4. Consecration
5. Exorcism

At 20% and down I simply threw a Hammer of Wrath in whenever I could.  The result of our efforts, upon our third or so attempt, yielded the following from me:

• DPS:  2633 (3rd overall – bested by a Frostfire build Mage (1) and a BM Hunter (2) )
• Highest crit:  7892 Judgement of Commmand
• Time to OOM: N/A

The third line above begs further explanation.  First however, allow me to explain a bit about this fight for those that may not have experienced it before.  Loatheb himself hits extremely weak – purposely.  The reason for this is because he puts a recurring debuff on the entire raid that is unavoidable which reduces all healing received by 100%.  The debuff lasts for 17 seconds and he reapplies it every 20 seconds.  This means that every 20 seconds you will have exactly 3 seconds with which to heal.  He has an outrageous amount of HP for a 10-man boss (6.9 million) but there is a catch – every 30 seconds he spawns a little spore that floats through the room.  This spore has only 2K health and when it dies (pops), it provides a handy little buff to the closest 5 players within 10 yards.  This buff increases critical strike chance of all abilities by 50% and reduces all threat you cause by 100% (no threat in other words).

Due to the mechanics of the fight, it was necessary for me to use Seal of Command instead of Blood given the fact that damaging myself during this encounter would result in my rapid demise.  Suffice it to say, however, that were I to be using Seal of Blood my mana efficiency would be even better given the availability of mana regeneration through Spritual Attunement.  Regardless, what I discovered is that I was able to maintain the aforementioned DPS cycle consistently for the duration of the fight with one, lone caveat:  I would occasionally have to forgo the use of Consecration for one cycle to allow my mana an opportunity to replenish enough to warrant its use.  In other words it did occur at times that, were I to cast Consecration, my mana would presumably dip too low to allow the use of the next ability in my DPS cycle the moment it was off cooldown.  This scenario occured perhaps once every minute but what I found was that I didn’t need long at all before my mana was once again at a sustainable level for resuming Consecration use.

All in all, the mana efficiency of Retribution at 80 seems adequate.  I often times even find myself using my Art of War for a quick heal on the MT just to help out.  During Loatheb, I was even able to put Sacred Shield upon the MT to practically ensure that my next Flash of Light on him would critically strike thus proccing Sheath of Light.  All in all, my friends, it seems good to be a raiding Retribution Paladin.